Illinois (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

Cary, Illinois

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we continue with I for Illinois.

We moved from New Jersey to Illinois the summer after my seventh grade (1974). Although my parents moved us around a lot, usually due to my father switching jobs, they were good about waiting until the school year was over. My dad left within weeks of accepting the job, but my mom stayed to sell the house. I remember that month with her ~ we went to the beach several times a week because we knew we would miss the Atlantic Ocean. The days were serene, since my parents weren’t arguing in front of me, and I wished things could stay like that, but Mom and I left to join Dad in August.

My memory is fuzzy on the move itself because I don’t remember a motel or temporary apartment. It’s hard to imagine that my father bought a house without my mother seeing it first, but nevertheless it seemed like we moved right into a new townhome in Cary, which was 40 miles northwest of Chicago and basically in the middle of nowhere. Or so it appeared to me, but my parents couldn't afford a place closer to the city. I looked forward to making a new start anyway and leaving my Eastern baggage behind. I was slim, which seemed important, and no one needed to know I had been a fat little girl who used to have mild asthma in the winter.

I made a friend, Nancy, who was a grade up and lived around the corner. We swam and played tennis daily. I also rode my bike alone for hours to new places for exploration purposes, with no way to contact anyone if I fell and hurt myself. Back then, this was perfectly acceptable for a thirteen year old; even my normally anxious mother had no issue with it. I decided I should earn my own spending money, so my dad told a few guys in his office who also lived in the complex, and their wives hired me to babysit their kiddos. One of the wives was exceptionally beautiful, and I used to try on her clothes. I guess that was pretty weird.

There was a meeting at the school in September, where they considered skipping me straight to high school because of my test scores. My mom thought it was a neat idea. My dad didn’t have an opinion that I recall, and no one asked me what I thought. Ultimately, the PTB decided to keep me with my age group, even if I would be bored at times. It turned out that the kids my age were mean and horrible, but who knows? It might have been worse to skip ahead. So, I endured eighth grade in this backwater place, where people were scared to visit the "big city," and my one good friend began to drift away, which made sense, as she was already in high school. 

After high school, my parents sold the townhome and bought a condo in a high-rise building in Chicago off the lake. Insanely freezing! I was supposed to go away to college, but that didn't work out, so I lived with them until we moved to California together, four years later. I have never returned to the Midwest.